Any Day Now is an actors’ project – it was directed by a former one, Travis Fine, and stars Alan Cumming, in a passionate, sincere performance of the kind we may have forgotten he could give on screen. He’s periodically in drag, but it’s never giggly drag. His character, in this true story from the 1970s, is a nightclub revue performer who becomes the de facto foster dad for a boy with Down’s syndrome (Isaac Leyva). The authorities are fine about this, until it’s discovered that Cumming’s lawyer (Garret Dillahunt) is also his live-in lover, at which point the machinery of blinkered justice is set in motion to deprive the two men of any right to adopt.

The movie is entirely clear about their compassion and commitment as parents, so much so that their legal battle has the Philadelphia problem of being an almost unimpeachable liberal crusade. What’s stacked against them is the whole system from a less tolerant era, and their arguments keep falling on deaf ears.

Redeeming Fine’s film from telemovie obviousness is the same thing that surely motivated it: what the actors, all three of them, make of their roles. Cumming’s emotive playing sharply blends wit, outrage and a stoic dignity. He’s matched every step of the way by the typically superb Dillahunt (Winter’s Bone), whose more closeted part lets him play abashed and apprehensive – he’s not yet confident enough in himself to stand up for a principle. Leyva is heartbreaking; their combined efforts carry the day.